When it was revealed this week that Jan Leeming the queen of prim newsreading from the 1980s, had joined an online dating service, there may have been some people out there who were shocked.
But then there are probably some people who were shocked when Angela Rippon did a high kick on the Morecambe and Wise show. The truth is: online dating is just not controversial anymore.
Leeming, who read the BBC news from 1980 to 1987, listed herself as Cheetahgirl on the Kindred Spirits website, saying that she was seeking a long and loving relationship with a man who shared her taste for adventure. "Fun-loving and adventurous," ran the listing, "I have worked in New Zealand and Australia and travelled much of the world."
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Speaking about the listing later, Leeming said she decided to use the site so her son Jonathan wouldn't have to accompany her to events quite so much. "My lovely son often acts as my escort but he has his own life to lead and can't spend all his spare time accompanying his mother," she said. Using the service, she said, had been positive. "It's been great fun, and I've had some lovely e-mail conversations," she said.
That positive experience has been shared by millions of others who use such sites. A survey by one of them, www.freedating.co.uk in 2006 estimated that more than six million people were doing so and that 71% of them were happy to admit it.
Part of the reason for this may be that the sites themselves are a million miles from thumbed pages at the back of magazines. They are bright and clear, and users can search for potential dates by criteria such as education, location and age. One site, www.loveandfriends.com, goes into great detail, asking users to spend at least an hour completing their form. One other leading site is www.friendsreuniteddating.co.uk.
Most of the websites have a monthly or quarterly fee and promise security by withholding personal details such as addresses and phone numbers until the users are ready to go a bit further.
Sarah Beeny, the television presenter and property developer, recently set up the website www.mysinglefriend.com, which works by people recommending their friends, and she certainly has no problem with online dating. "It's more normal now to be on a dating site in your thirties than when you're younger because I think you've got to the stage where you just don't meet as many people as perhaps you once did at uni and so on," she has said. "In your thirties you tend to have your group of friends and people at work and if you don't fancy any of them, then you have to look elsewhere."
It's a viewpoint supported by Relate, the relationship counselling body, which says the stigma that might have existed around such sites in the early days has disappeared.
"Dating online allows people quite a lot of privacy as well, because they can do a bit of quiet research and look around in their own home," a spokesman has said. "You don't have to meet a middleman or go to an actual dating agency office, which takes a lot of courage."
The growth in the use of website dating may also be down to the realities of modern life. Certainly, Rhoda Moore, of Friends Reunited Dating (FRD), believes so. She has said that the market has developed because the UK has one of the highest divorce rates in Europe, we're living longer but our partner isn't necessarily so and we're finding ourselves on our own when we've many years of life left in us, and, crucially, we are taking our careers more seriously and marrying older. Cheetagirl would probably agree.
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